Massive Conspiracy Against All Life
by vikung-fu
Summary: At the very end of everything, as that once splendid being, Emperor of the kingdom dolorous, rises from his tomb on Planet Nemesis, Rita reflects on the death of all living creatures. A short piece for Super Sentai Strongest Battle, reflecting on character motivations.


**Massive Conspiracy Against All Life**

When had she first considered herself a Satanist; when had she first mouthed the words in praise of that old foe, that secret rival? Had it been in the dirt of her hometown, with her face pushed down close to the ground, or had it been when she had first looked up at the stars and had seen how beautiful the skies were and hated them all the more for that?

It didn't matter, of course, on the dead world of Nemesis, with the slumbering Death Phantom residing at its core, a paradox awaiting its genesis in the 30th century, there were no stars to be seen anymore, only a blanket of darkness falling gently over the universe.

Standing in the shadow of that ancient evil, Rita trembled in fear and anticipation, its giant, crystalline form towering over the dead world, over its tarnished crystal palace, over the arenas she had set up upon its surface to draw the life energy from unwitting combatants. This, at last, was her wish made real; this was annihilation given shape, extinction shaped in the likeness of something almost familiar, almost human.

It was said that once Nemesis was a rich and fertile world, that once it was a world over-brimming with the diversity of life. Human beings had changed that. By the time she had made good her escape from her own home world, Nemesis had been dead for countless generations, pollution and war burning all life, flora and fauna, from its surface long before the shape of words had formed on her lips. Nemesis now was a cold world, a dead world, host only to dead things, ancient things, ghosts of the chaos present in the cosmos long before the creation of matter.

Have faith in Magiel, people who were older than her had told her, people who should have known better; believe that the Gosei Angels are watching over you—and yet the angels were blind, she thought, and Magiel was wild and mad, thrashing lonely in her empty heavenly temple. All that mattered now was evil, all that mattered now was the legacy of Nemesis, the dead thing that once rested beneath its surface born anew, and her final goal, her final vengeance, a massive conspiracy against all life.

She closed her eyes, feeling the tremble of anticipation in her heart, in her frail frame. It didn't matter if she was weak, soon she would wield the ultimate power of death, the emperor of the kingdom dolorous rising up at her behest, extinguishing the remaining stars from the sky.

All of the humiliation, all of the doubt, everything wiped away in the rising of that once splendid being and all that followed in his ascent. She tried to picture it, tried to imagine the cosmos as it would be without life, the only remaining presence being that ancient traitor, yet she could not—how vast was space, how empty would that frontier be? Could she die happy then? When that evil phantom was free of all shackles, when his weighted presence crushed Nemesis to dust, when her own life became forfeit, would that wash away all the shame she felt?

In order to survive, she had been forced to do terrible things, to prostrate herself before those who possessed power where she had had known none. She had been a possession like anything else, an animal in the collection of those who held sway over the cosmos; where then had been Magiel, where then had been the Gosei Angels? When she was being pushed down, when she was being held down, where were the heavenly saints to watch over her? Where were the heroes who professed faith in truth and justice, imbued with that power to call forth their armour from elsewhere?

Would it be enough, she asked herself; when Nemesis collapsed, when she died along with it, would it be enough to just trust that such things signalled the end of all? She thought again of all she had left behind, all she had lost, and, slowly, she opened her eyes.

It had to be enough. There was no other choice. And now, nothing could stop her; not ancient Magiel, not the absent Gosei Angels, not all the heroes of distant Earth—the future was nothingness; no light, no life, just emptiness. Isolation. Death.


End file.
